Home
by Dakki
Summary: After six long years traveling abroad, Sammy Conlon is back in New York City. In her absence, a lot has changed--but one thing will always remain the same.
1. The Telegram

DISCLAIMER: Although I go to a high school where there are students who look (I swear on "Newsies" and all things holy [which is "Newsies"]) exactly like Snitch, Itey, Tumbler, Les, and one insanely cute freshman who could easily pass for David Moscow, I have been cursed not only in the fact that there is not one single person there who bears even a passing resemblance to Spot, Kid Blink, Racetrack, or Jack, but also in that Dalton, my annoying yet semi-cute preppie muse, must constantly remind me that I do not own and never will own the newsies.  
  
(But if I would, I definitely would share them. Honest! I don't know how I would manage that.most likely I would upload them as zip files and put them on KaZaA. Then you could just download them onto your computer, and voila, your own private newsie.)  
  
DALTON: *stares*  
  
And I can run a practice test on Dalton!  
  
DALTON: Eep.  
  
Right...now, on one final note: this fic is a sequel. It's the continuing story of Samantha Conlon, who was introduced in a story I wrote over the summer called "The Newsie Princess of Brooklyn," begun the very day I first saw "Newsies". I started it out not knowing where it was going to go and it ended up pretty much as a prelude of what you are about to read. So, if you've already read it, well, that's happy-dance worthy. But if you haven't- it's not absolutely essential if you want to read this one, but...*puppy dog eyes* why wouldn't you want to read it?  
  
DALTON: Oh, god, Dakki...not the puppy-dog eyes. Just let them read the damn thing, okay?  
  
Oh, fine. Hey, you wanna say it?  
  
DALTON: *in awe* Can I?  
  
Sure.  
  
DALTON: And now, on to the fic!  
  
*~*~*  
  
Home  
  
*~*~*  
  
I heard it said once, years and years ago, that tradition is something that people create in order to try keep the world from changing.  
  
The comment was made by the kind of person who was taught to ignore me just as I was taught to ignore him, a man in expensive clothes with a clean, bland face and an aristocratic bearing, a woman hanging on his arm and every word. I was out selling the evening edition as bruised purple dusk fell over Brooklyn, and he casually dropped a quarter into my outstretched palm as he spoke that last tidbit, both of these things undoubtedly done to impress his lady friend. He was the kind of person I would usually have to run from or lie to about not having change in order to keep even a thin nickel. The kind of person who wouldn't even look at me twice, or anyone else in my position, the boys who shined his shoes and brought him his coal and ice and headlines. I was barely ten at the time, and already I knew these things. What I didn't know a thing about was tradition.  
  
Tradition. New York City killed tradition. We were the epitome of modernity, a place people came to not because the streets were paved with gold but because it was the only way they could survive. Moving, changing, growing-the world's longest suspension bridge, the world's tallest building. Wealth butted up against poverty, Rockefellers with their minks and caviar strolling along the marble floor held up by the invisible masses. It was a city where children were sent off to work as breadwinners for their families, or simply worked to support themselves. And I was one of those children. What did I know of tradition?  
  
Tradition for me was up at dawn, up, up, up, out of bed and get your papes, sell what you can, eat what you can't. Headline no good? Too bad, kid, it's a cruel world. Out late at night to try to make ends meet, gotta take care of yourself, you're not a baby anymore. Through the times out with Spot sleeping in alleyways barely getting by, and then to the lodging house, Spot's rise to power, lucky for you, your brother owns Brooklyn. Through the year with Jack out on the docks at night, through the Spanish American War, trying to squeeze out all the money you could. Then the strike, the bulls, the rallies, the scabbers, the win-since when was luck on our side? And then that long cold winter. Tradition was poverty, tradition was work, tradition was nothing to eat. Tradition was dead.  
  
But still, I took what I could. A breakfast with Spot now and then, a visit with the Duane Street boys. And I had always relished my Sunday morning bath, even if more often than not it was nothing more than a swan dive off the Brooklyn docks. In the past few years, as my life had become more disordered and tumultuous than even I could have imagined, it was the only practice I even tried to observe. Four continents in six years, a thousand cities, a million people, and still a good hot bath on Sunday morning would wash my sins away. Sometimes I wondered if I had taken up with Boone simply because he owned a porcelain tub.  
  
This was my church, my holy water, my communion. As the waves rolled over me, across my back and shoulders and hips, everything that had happened in the past week-in the past lifetime-gradually fell away, leaving only hot clean wholesome sweet. Clean. Yes. A bath was what I wanted now. A bath was what I needed.  
  
Silently I slipped out from under the covers, careful not to wake Boone. I shivered as I was drenched by the chill air, air that hinted at ice. The fire that had been lit last night was down to its last glowing embers by now, and I did my best to get it strong again. Fumbling only a little, I managed to fill the copper and set it on the wood stove so I could have hot water for my bath. In the past few weeks I had learned to work well in the dark, and had in fact become better acquainted with it than I had ever hoped to be, as kerosene and candles were costly where we lived and gas light all but nonexistent. Darkness surrounded me on all sides now. I rose in the dark and dressed in the dark, cooked in the dark, walked in the dark, slept in the dark. What little light there was came around noon, bleak and gray and cold, and seemed to leave before it had even arrived. And that, too, was fading fast. I had come to Alaska because it was a place filled with rivers and wolves and adventure, because it was a place where the sun never ceased to shine. Now I was trapped in eternal night, and I didn't think I would ever get out.  
  
I had arrived in Fairbanks a few days after the summer solstice, and now it was early December. It was the longest I had stayed in one place since I had left Brooklyn, a little over six years ago. After getting on that train in New York, I had gone across the country to San Francisco, then up to Oregon where I traveled along the coast to Vancouver, cutting across central Canada to Montreal and then Cape Breton Island, up to Newfoundland and across the ocean to Dublin, the original Conlon family home. Then some time in England, and down to France and Spain, over to Morocco and to Italy, Greece, Russia, through Shanghai and Canton, then drifting through the Indian Ocean until I got to Perth. Across Australia, Sydney and New Zealand, then up to America through the Pacific with a stop in Hawaii. California again, through Texas and into the Southern states and the Florida Keys. Up along the East Coast as far as Philadelphia, and then Canada, through the Yukon Territories and, at last, Alaska.  
  
Alaska. Into the arms of Boone, who offered me a warm bed and the chance to rest for a while. I had been traveling for so long--drifting through, doing odd jobs, taking in laundry, cooking, waitressing, house-painting, until I had scraped enough money together to move on, leaving whatever relationships I had forged behind--that I had forgotten what it felt like to sit still. As I poured the boiling water into the tub I knew I could no longer deny that the time had come for me to settle down. But not in Alaska. Not like this.  
  
I had adopted the habit of going to bed in my underthings, an old shirt I had worn in New York handed down to me by one of the boys wrapped around my shoulders. Now I undid the buttons and eased the laces that held the whole ragged thing together, and let my clothes fall to the floor. Easing into my Sunday morning bath, easing into my Sunday morning. I didn't clean so much as purify. Could a bar of soap and some hot water really make you forget your whole life? No. Always, no. But every Sunday I hoped the answer had changed.  
  
How long was I in there that morning? A long time. But it wasn't long enough. It never was.  
  
It is impossible to tell time in Fairbanks. A precise measurement would be Later. So it's impossible for me to know how long I had been in the tub when Boone came in with the telegram, only that the water was cooling and the sky was still dark and now it really never would get light in Alaska, because I was going to leave before there was any light to see, leave it plunged in darkness and never come back. I knew all this the minute I saw what he held in his hands. Telegrams always meant news, especially when you never got any news at all. More than that, telegrams meant bad news. Joy you could wait to hear about; something you didn't want to know couldn't seem to get to you fast enough.  
  
He handed it to me wordlessly, knowing he would find out soon enough what it said simply by looking at my face. I sat up a little, reached out with a wet hand, and took it.  
  
SPOT HURT BAD STOP TROLLEY STOP MIGHT NOT MAKE IT STOP COME HOME NOW STOP LOVE BROOKLYN  
  
Stop.  
  
I stood up, fast. Water sloshed out of the tub, spilling over onto the floor. My head filled with wool and for a moment I couldn't see. I reached out to try to steady myself and Boone took hold of my arm. As soon as I could stand, I pulled away from him.  
  
"What is it?" he asked.  
  
"My-my brother. He's been hurt. I have to leave."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I have to leave. I have to go home. Now."  
  
I stepped out of the tub, pulled some clothes on--whatever I found on the floor--and began hurriedly to pack. At some point in the last minute or so my mind had separated from my body, not some dreamy floating-above-ground experience, but ripped away, hanging by a thread. My movements were clumsy as I stumbled around the bedroom, and it wasn't long before I sat down heavily on the bed, trying desperately to calm myself.  
  
"Sam, can't this wait?"  
  
"What?" I said, startled.  
  
"Well...I mean, it can't be that bad. And besides," he added. "It's only your brother."  
  
I looked at him coldly. "How can you even say something like that?"  
  
Boone scratched his head. "So you're close?" he said. "With this brother of yours--Spike, is it?"  
  
"Spot," I said, standing up resolutely and pulling out my suitcase from under the bed. "His name is Spot. And he's not just my brother. He's my entire family."  
  
I looked over at Boone, saw the look on his face. I wondered if I had come all this way just to live in squalor with a man who only cared about my comings and goings because they affected how he ate. This journey had started out as a way to spend some time alone, to think, to learn to be happy again and get away form the suffocating streets of New York. But now I was just hiding, running, trying to cover up my tracks. I had needed to go home a long time before this.  
  
I was on a train headed east that very night.  
  
*~*~*  
  
TBC... 


	2. Arrival

*~*~*  
  
Home  
  
*~*~*  
  
It took me six days nonstop to get back to New York. After going by ship down to California I went home in almost exactly the same way as I had left it, tracing perfectly my escape route-straight on across from San Francisco through the mountains and the fields and the plains. That huge rolling thunderous country I didn't think I would ever get tired of, going from the loose salty sweetness of the pacific through mountains as big as a century, through the green forests and the sad sprawling farms. And so back to the dusty packed-in east coast, expecting to find it just as it had been that day, years ago, when I had left. That day when I had heard my name spoken in winds that came from halfway around the world, when I had felt that primal urge--go west young woman, the call had sounded. And following it, I went.  
  
And now, returning to all I had left behind, what did I think of? What did I think of, when my mind was not filled with departure times and ticket prices and most of all the thought that my brother might lie dying at that very moment-the thought that I tried hardest to banish from my mind? I thought of the place I had called home for so long. I thought of what my life had been, and I remembered.  
  
Nostalgia is the most deadly weapon that time can use against us, and I realized somewhere between Omaha and Akron that I was in danger of sinking into it clear up to my waist. So I did my best, on that long sleepless journey, to remind myself of all the things I was glad I had left behind. And honestly, it wasn't that hard. There were the long hours and the never- ending race to sell the next edition, out there every day, and then back to the lodging house, that permanent temporary home. I had been raised almost entirely by boys, and people often make use of the familiar saying: "what were you, raised by wolves?"-but I think those people have never chanced to meet one of the Brooklyn newsies. Growing up between the constant squalor and the dirty jokes-how can you tell a goil from da Bronx is gettin' her period? She's only wearin' one sock! Ha! Ha! Ha!--coupled with the complete lack of exposure to females, it was no wonder I didn't know what to do with myself once the impossible happened and I fell for Jack. But then, maybe no one in that situation would really know what to do.  
  
And so the list went on. I spent sleepless nights counting the things I hoped to never experience again, the things I was glad to have gotten away from in one piece, but I knew it was a pointless endeavor. What was I trying to do, anyway? Convince myself that I didn't want to come home? That I was lucky to live in a rootless existence, to drift from town to town and never settle? To go years at a time without seeing the people I loved? Whatever I was aiming for, I failed miserably. I could go on for as long as I liked about all the hardships I had gone through, but in the end I had to admit that I missed my old life. There was something to be said about being part of something, about having someone always there to watch your back, hide you from the bulls and spot you two bits on a bad day. I missed being 'one of the boys', I missed the lodging house, I missed the docks. I missed Spot. I was going home, and at that moment there was no place I would rather be.  
  
*~*~*  
  
When I finally got back, I went to the only place I could think of-the old lodging house. I couldn't think of any other place to go. It was early in the morning, and I had no idea what was going to happen-lucky for me, though, someone was waiting for me. Sitting on the stairs, resting his head against the banister reading the morning edition. There were a thousand thins I could have thought then, things I could have remembered about him, but all I could think was how I had known he would be there. It didn't seem like anything else could have happened.  
  
"Wolf," I called. He looked up at me with his soft brown eyes, raised his head and smiled. He was a big guy, as tall and as strong as a mountain, although he had seemed bigger before I left. No one ever bothered him or tried to pick a fight because of his size, and it was just as well, because he would never hurt a fly. He had taken care of Spot and I when we were still out on the streets, made sure we had food and a place to stay. He told me later that day that he was married now, a steelworker. It made me wonder what had happened to the others, to Dainty and Shanghai and Mince and everyone else-were they all going quietly about the business of being grown-ups now? Had everything I had known changed?  
  
But at that moment, I didn't have to worry about it. As Wolf got up and came down the steps and said my name, almost disbelieving, I smiled. I had arrived.  
  
*~*~*  
  
Thank you thank you THANK YOU to all who reviewed. A nice long chapter in this epic saga will be up soon if you give me another-love, birth, death, sex, betrayal, happiness, grief and Max Casella. How can you say no? TBC.... 


	3. Angel of Mercy

A/N: In the last installment of this hopelessly drawn-out serial (blame chemistry class on the lateness of the update. Don't worry, though-I have realized, somewhat late in the day, that one has to choose between homework and fanfic once school starts in the fall, and I have chosen fanfic), I promised you love, birth, death, sex, betrayal, happiness, grief and Max Casella. In this chapter, I have pretty much everything except the last one. So sit back, relax, and let the story unfold. We'll just have to see about Race in the chapters to come. ;-D  
  
*~*~*  
  
Home  
  
*~*~*  
  
This is what happened between Saturday, November seventeenth, the day that things began to go wrong, and Monday, November twenty-sixth, the day I found my way back home:  
  
Saturday morning. Spot was going up to the Battery to visit a few friends, hitching a ride on the back of a trolley in order to avoid parting with the nickel it would cost him if he actually paid. He had two hard-earned dollars in his pocket that he wasn't going to let go of easily, at least not until the poker game that night.  
  
The more dramatic continuation (and probably the one you've been expecting to hear) would be to say that Spot never made it to that poker game. But this was hardly the case. A few bruised ribs, he thought (in fact one was fractured, but he didn't learn that until much later), shouldn't keep him from having a good time. He had dealt with worse in his life than a fall from the back of a trolley. So he paid no attention what pain he felt and went about his business as usual, and when he found himself a few days later with a fever and a bad cough he wrote it off as a cold. It was, after all, almost December-the first snows had already fallen and people were falling ill left, right, and center. He wasn't the kind of person who got sick all the time, and when he did he just ignored it and waited for it to go away. What reason did he have to make a big deal about it? None. He couldn't let people think he was softening up.  
  
On Tuesday morning he was coughing up blood. He could barely breathe; he had woken up that night soaked with sweat. Something that had been nothing to worry about had become pneumonia. Spot was an easy target. The squalor he was living in, and the cold, and the city-the fall from the trolley had left him wide open. A fractured rib was nothing short of an invitation for disease. It was something that happened all the time, nothing to worry about at all. Quite common among people like my brother. Things looked bad now but with some rest he would be back on his feet in no time-with just a few exceptions this was always how it went. Just a few exceptions.  
  
This I learned at the hospital that day, talking to a nurse with a uniform as blindingly white as the brilliant winter sun. At the time all this was going on-when Spot went down for the count that day, when Wolf took him against his will to the hospital and sent me twelve words of summoning that night-he knew none of it. Only now, as I sat by his bed in that enormous ward full of sickly cleanliness and white white white, did things at last start to clear up. My brother was sick now, but he would be fine. This was how it went. With just a few exceptions.  
  
It took him a few moments to realize it was me. I sat quietly as he struggled to identify his surroundings, and when his eyes like two blue purey marbles at last settled on my face I took a deep breath, smiled, and did my best. "Hi, Spot."  
  
He sank back into bed, more tired than I had ever seen him in my life. He looked up at me. "I'm gonna kill Wolf."  
  
I laughed. "I'm glad you haven't gone and changed on me."  
  
"Yeh," he said, trying visibly not to cough. "Can't say the same for you, though, Sam."  
  
I thought about this before I let myself answer, as I was sorely tempted to, with a smile and a cheerful "not me". Whether I had changed or not in the last six years was a question that had been at the back of my mind since I left Alaska, and now I tried yet again to find an answer.  
  
I had been sixteen years old when I left; now I was twenty-two. That, at least, was something. But did age really count? For years to go by was inevitable, but to grow up was not, and at that moment I was certain that although I was older I was definitely not any wiser. I would make the same mistakes all over again, if only given a chance. The only changes I could truly discern were skin-deep. The yellow hair that when I left had fallen to my waist-on an archaeological dig in Knossos a year and a half before I had found it nothing more than a hindrance, getting stiff and coarse with sand and salt, and bobbed it loosely with a pair of shears-for the rest of my time in Greece I had been known to all the locals as "Snip". My thick Brooklyn accent had dissolved over time, replaced by a broad, stubborn, Western tongue. I had a handful more scars, my skin no longer so pale. But my hair fell past my shoulders now, and in time would grow back completely if I let it, which I knew full well that I would. I could feel that edge coming back into my speech, the dialect of a girl who knew no greater beauty than a steel-cabled suspension bridge. And always, underneath, who I was had remained constant as the stars that had guided me. I was Samantha Margaret Conlon, daughter of Kathleen and Samuel, sister of Spot. My heart still beat with the same steady cadence, still loved and remembered the same people, a feeling that went deeper than the mind. I realized for the first time, then, not only that I hadn't changed at all, but that maybe I didn't want to.  
  
I shook my head. "No. I haven't changed."  
  
"You're still the same person," he said. "But you're...you're different." He tried to sit up a little, but gave up when he couldn't quite find the energy. "I dunno. Maybe ya grew up."  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
His lips curved in the beginnings of a smile. "I'se old enough an' wise enough to know that you're older and wiser. Did that make any sense?" he added.  
  
"Kind of," I laughed.  
  
He started to say something else, then, but halfway through the first sound of the first letter he lost for the moment whatever authority he still had over his body and began to cough almost uncontrollably. It terrified me to see him like that, and it scared me even more when all I could do was move a little closer and try to lay a steadying hand on him. It hadn't struck me before what a strong hold the sickness had on him, the same sickness that years before had...no. I wasn't going to think about that. Spot was sick now, but he would be fine. This was how it went. With just a few exceptions.  
  
"You're fine," I said shakily, after it had ended and his breathing was more or less steady.  
  
"Look," he began, "Sam, if I die-"  
  
"You're not gonna to die. I won't let you."  
  
He nodded. "But if I do-an' they bury me and everything, make sure they don't put 'Samuel', y'know, on the, on the tombstone. Make 'em get it right. Spot Conlon."  
  
I didn't say anything.  
  
"Sammy, promise me."  
  
If I had known words loving and kind, I would have given them to him. If I had known sweet songs I would have sung them. If I could have done anything to make him feel safe, then I would have done it. But I didn't know any of that-or if I ever had, then it was long forgotten by then. So I comforted him the only way I knew how: by insulting him.  
  
"You ain't dying, you goddamn girl. Jesus Christ, you're a pansy. You're gonna live."  
  
"It hurts to breathe," was all he said.  
  
"The King of Brooklyn, smote by a cough? Forget it."  
  
He smiled. "Smote? Sammy's been readin' her thesaurus."  
  
Knowing I had convinced him, I let myself laugh. "When you move around so much you tend to pick up a few things."  
  
"Yeh?" he said with interest. "Like what? I wanna know what you've been doin' all this time, find out if it's so much better den bein' a newsie." He smiled.  
  
"Well," I began, wondering just where to start. "I can shoot a rifle. I was in Alaska for the past few months, and the man I was living with taught me to hunt. I wasn't too bad at it. It was really the only way you could make a living there anyway. You do what you have to do." I turned to him, memories coming to me too fast to recount, trying to spill it all out. "Like in Oregon. I ended up cooking at a logging camp-you did breakfast in the morning for the first group, and then for the second, and the third, and the fourth, and by the time you were done with that it was time to start with lunch. But you learn a lot," I added. "Whether you want to or not. I mean that's how I really learned how to cook. I can play a pretty good hand of poker now-I'm pretty sure I'd still lose my money to Race, though--and I can drink any man under the table, because that's what they do for fun in Siberia and that's how you win money for your train ride out. I can read ancient Greek and Hieroglyphs, and I know a little French and Spanish, and Mandarin-"  
  
"Mandarin?"  
  
"It's a kind of Chinese. But I only know enough to ask how much a room costs and say I'm not a prostitute."  
  
"Well, that's all you really need."  
  
I smiled. "I can sail. I was on a fishing boat in the Philippines for a while. And I was in Russia for a winter. It's amazing there, Spot. And Amsterdam! Do you know what they do there? There are all these canals, and in the wintertime they freeze up, and everybody skates. You'd love it." I sighed. "There are so many things I have to tell you about."  
  
"You will tell me. You'll tell me everything."  
  
I nodded. "I'll come back every day, and I'll tell you. All of it. I'm not going anywhere. I'm home."  
  
*~*~*  
  
Past  
  
*~*~*  
  
Even in the summer of 1878, when she was at her peak, Kathleen McKenna was by no means the prettiest girl on Water Street. Not to say that she was plain, for with her long golden hair and cloudless, pale blue eyes, she was anything but. And though her figure might not have been as full as one might have wished, nor her hands as dainty, nor her walk as graceful, her voice held the lilting cadences of a Dublin girl even after five years in New York, a voice that, although it did not make her irresistible to every man in Brooklyn, was alluring enough for Samuel Conlon.  
  
It was a charmed love affair. He was the type of man she had always dreamt of, strong an honest, and maybe he was poor, but certainly no poorer than she. She was nineteen; he, twenty-one. They were still young enough to believe that if they had love for each other than they had all they needed. And they certainly did have that.  
  
Their blossoming romance was common knowledge to the gossip-hungry inhabitants of Water Street, and often a topic ripe for debate among adults, of the common "how long will this thing last" variety. They didn't have to wonder long. Sam and Kathleen got married in the spring of 1879, with a cake donated by the bakery down the street and a feather bed provided by the downstairs neighbors. Beyond that, they had to fend for themselves. Sam found good work, doing construction on the new bridge, and he brought home a paycheck at the end of every week to his beautiful wife. She was doing what she could as well, taking in laundry and doing some housework here and there, and between the two of them, they had enough. Meat on Sundays and money for rent, a coin or two in the cracked mug that rested on the windowsill, waiting for a rainy day-that was really all they needed. And for a while, things seemed like they were going their way. For a while, they were happy. But all that changed when the children came.  
  
First, it was a boy. Born with the birth of 1880, almost nine months to the day since the wedding. He was smaller than most but he had the fighting spirit in him, everyone could see that from the very beginning. They named him after his father, Samuel William Conlon, and for a while he had a life fine enough to fit such a name. Some of the boys that he would meet later on had been orphans from the outset, never knowing a real home- but he knew what it felt like to be wanted. To be loved. It was something that only made it harder for him, once things changed for the worse.  
  
They really only had enough money for one child. A second would be asking for trouble, they both knew it. But Kathleen wanted a daughter. Around the time Samuel was first learning to walk she began to have visions of a little girl all her own. A little girl with fair hair and sunny blue eyes just like hers, who would be her companion during the day when she was running errands and at home fixing supper, who she could tell stories to and teach to sing the songs that she had learned as a child. She would make sweet little dresses for her to wear, in pink and yellow and pale blue, and she would braid matching ribbons into her plaits, and all the ladies up and down Water Street would comment on what a lovely little girl Kathleen Conlon was bringing up. So on February fourteenth, 1883, another child born into their little family, a girl who was named-in a manner that parents always found adorable, never realizing that it would most likely cause their child endless teasing and frustration later in life-Samantha Margaret Conlon.  
  
She had her mother's hair all right, and her beautiful blue eyes, but that was about the only thing that matched up to Kathleen's ideas of what her daughter would be like. She was a tomboy from the outset, born ready for a fight just like her brother. When she was old enough to join in the neighborhood children's games, she chose not to go off with the other girls skipping rope and playing with dolls, but to play stickball and marbles with the boys instead. Even when she was only a few minutes old it was clear where her destiny lay, the first sound she made not a cry but a laugh. But she was their daughter, and they loved her dearly, all of them a family. That was when things were right, when storybook endings really did seem to come true in real life. But we all pay dearly for our happiness-or so Kathleen believed, anyway. And in this, at least, she was right.  
  
The trouble began just after Samuel's fifth birthday. Quite simply, the money dried up. Work on the bridge had stopped a while back and their father had found work here and there, in the steel mills and the like, but nothing that lasted. Money was scarce, and made scarcer by the fact that he drank away at least half of his wages. That was the time when Sam Conlon became two people, as different as night and day, and it was anyone's guess which one would emerge from day to day.  
  
The first Sam Conlon was the one they all knew, the one Kathleen had fallen in love with all those years ago. He was handsome and strong, the one who gave his son a slingshot for his birthday, to his wife's token admonishments ("Sam, he's too young for it!" "Nonsense, Kath. All boys need to learn to defend themselves. And besides, when Samantha's of age and all the boys are linin' up 'round the block, ready to eat chips out of her knickers, do you think make a fuss?" "You? You'll chain her to the radiator"). He was the one who carried his son proudly on his shoulders, singing in the strong tenor that everyone on Water Street couldn't help but admire.  
  
In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty  
  
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone  
  
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow  
  
Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!  
  
And young Samuel, held up almost as high as the sky on the shoulders of a man he was certain was the most wonderful father in the world, would sing out the chorus as loud as he could.  
  
A-live a-live O! A-live a-live O!  
  
Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!  
  
Then there was the other Sam Conlon. He was the one who came home drunk, the one who would belt you for showing him too much cheek and belt you for not showing him enough. He was the one who let his children go hungry, the one who made Kathleen shiver with dread when he got into bed next to her. And as the months went by, this Sam Conlon more and more was the only one they ever saw, and they were left wondering where their husband and their father had gone.  
  
Kathleen did her best to keep her children safe. She couldn't shield them from all the pain in the world, she thought, or even all the pain that went on in their home, but she could at least try to protect them. She bore the brunt of his anger. Bruises in muted shades of umber and violet began to show up on her face, colors that would have been almost beautiful if it weren't for their origins. It hurt her children to see them almost as much as their father did, for she could only protect them for so long, and soon Sam would take any excuse to tear into them. "Don't talk back, boy!" "Shut yer mouth and eat what's put before you!" "Do as I say!" And Kathleen protected little Samuel and Samuel protected his sister and in the end all of this was no protection at all. He was a strong man, with big, thick hands, powerful as a racehorse. Even years later, Samuel would be terrified at the very thought of those hands.  
  
But once in a while, they would see the old Sam Conlon. The Sam Conlon they all loved. And they would think that maybe it was worth it, just to see him once and a while, and every time they would try harder to appease the other man, each time failing--and so it went, for months, years, until one day it just couldn't go on any longer.  
  
It was the day after Christmas. Samuel was six, going on seven, and he was happy. Happier than he could ever remember being. He and Samantha had awoken on Christmas morning to find water street covered with a fresh coat of snow, and for a while they had even forgotten about presents as they went out to play with the other kids. He was especially proud of himself for how well he was doing with his slingshot-he hadn't quite hit the snowman he was aiming for but had been in the right general direction-only a couple inches to the left and he would have nailed it. And even if he hadn't been happy with it, there was something about new snow, all the flaws in the world covered up by a pristine layer of white, that always made him happy. And after they were done playing they had gone inside, and Mumma had made them cocoa and they had opened presents and then had Christmas dinner and gone to bed, and everything was perfect. Just as it should have been. And the best part was that the old Sam Conlon hadn't left for nearly a week, their real father was back for Christmas, singing carols with them and being the man they all knew he was. It would have been enough to make Samuel think that maybe he was back for good, if he hadn't been through this so many times before.  
  
Years later, no one could remember what the argument was about, or even what started it. Maybe Kathleen burned the oatmeal, or Samantha lost her skate key, or Samuel was too loud. Maybe it was nothing at all. But at any rate, the man they hated was back-and by the end of the day Samuel had a broken arm. Kathleen took him to Dr. Hennessey to get it fixed, saying he had fallen down, and by the time they got back to the apartment it was dark. Samuel was sent straight to bed, and as he lay awake in the dark feeling brave, his sister sleeping peacefully on the other side of the room- it would take a brass band to wake her up-he listened as the voices rose around him, some words disappearing, swallowed up by the night, and others hitting him with such force he thought he would cry out.  
  
"...can't treat our children this way. I won't stand for it." That was Mumma.  
  
"Don't you EVER tell me...my own children."  
  
"Don't touch me, Sam. Don't-"  
  
The sound of a body hitting the wall that separated the bedroom from the kitchen. Samuel could feel the vibrations in his own body. It was then that he smashed the pillow over his face, rocked back and forth, trying with all his might not to hear.  
  
Nearly an hour later Kathleen pushed the door open, shards of light shed by the lamp burning dully in the kitchen spilling across the bare wood floor. Walking over to where her son was skillfully feigning sleep, she sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the pillow away, looking carefully at his face. So like an angel, she thought, brushing some loose hair away from his forehead-he really did need to get a haircut. An angel of mercy, sent down to watch over Water Street. How had she let this happen to him for so long?  
  
"Mumma?" Samuel whispered, opening his eyes.  
  
"I'm here."  
  
"He's gone, isn't he?"  
  
Kathleen took his hand in hers. "Yes. He's gone now. He's not going to hurt you anymore."  
  
"Will you miss him?" he asked quietly.  
  
She nodded. "Yes."  
  
"So will I."  
  
"I know, Cuchulain," she said, sighing. "But it was what had to be done."  
  
Samuel nodded. "I have to take care of you and Samantha now, don't I?"  
  
"You're to be the man of the house now," Kathleen said. "You have to be strong."  
  
"I'll have to..." Samuel furrowed his brow, deep in though. "I'll have to get a new name, won't I, Mumma?"  
  
"Why's that?"  
  
He picked at the edge of his blanket, looking up at her. "Well I can't...I can't be called after him. I might..."  
  
Kathleen knew what came next. "Don't worry, Cuchulain," she said, bending down to kiss him on the cheek. "We'll find you a new name. That's what tomorrows are for."  
  
And with that his mother got up, walked out of the room and closed the door behind her, darkness so thick that he couldn't tell the difference between having his eyes closed and having them open. Eventually, he let himself close them, realized that he was warm in his bed and that the worst was over. A new name. A new life. Tomorrow.  
  
*~*~*  
  
TBC... 


	4. Annabelle

A/N: First off-thank you, thank you, one and all, for your fantastic reviews. Mwah! *does happy dance with her annoying yet semi-cute preppie* Dalton, for one, was absolutely floored by the response-he annoys me to finish these things but somehow doesn't think they're very praiseworthy. Hopefully you guys have showed him what's what...and I didn't even give you Race! (Just for your loyalty you each get a jar of peanut butter-and if you don't like it, well, tough; Dalton's eaten everything else in the house. Bad muse.) But fret not...more drama awaits. Starting at--*gasp!*- -this very chapter. So read on, and enjoy your snack. Extra crunchy, anyone?  
  
*~*~*  
  
Home  
  
*~*~*  
  
I left the hospital a little over an hour later, after Spot had at last gone back to sleep I could perhaps believe that I had gained a little safety in that morning's long-overdue meeting. It was almost eleven a.m. when I stepped out onto the street, the sun high in the sky, its unabashed wintry brightness only serving to make me feel more cold. But what a strange thing, to know that the sun was still there, even-that it still rose in the morning, and set at night, rescued us from darkness without fail. I felt then as I had felt six years ago, when I had fallen for Jack and the sky had come down on both of us. For the days that I was walking wounded and even, for a while, after I had been safely delivered out west, I felt the strangest sense of wonder at every piece of evidence that the world did go on. The rain that followed me out to California turned to snow on the jagged mountains, melting-sweet, and I was astonished that such a thing could happen, time passing by without me going along with it. Later that winter, while I was Canada, near Yellowknife, I went to one of those mountains with a photographer friend of mine, and those pricks of icy heat melting on my face were like Rapunzel's tears lifting the veil of blindness from her long-lost sweetheart. That day on the mountain I learned to see again, and what I saw was that all ties to my past were gone and I was now in a whole new world, free to live my life.  
  
In truth, that feeling never really left me. Even now, back in New York City, I knew that I would never go back to being the same person as I had been before. I had seen the world that lay beyond Brooklyn's daily fight for survival, and this knowledge alone had given me a strange kind of liberty. Still, though, I knew that it would be nothing short of hubris to not believe that I was now at the mercy of the city.  
  
I had forgotten just what it was like to be living here. Everything was fast, fast, faster, nothing constant, nothing that stayed, the atmosphere itself seeming to heat up charged with tension and strain until I feared the very air around me would ignite. I looked around me, felt this living current pass through me, felt the weight of a thousand lives around me. No more Alaska silence, no more snow, no more howling midnight wind, no more darkness. This was life as it was meant to be lived, a dusty allegory to the hungry pursuits of man. Money. Sex. Religion. Everything that mattered was contained on a single Brooklyn street corner. I opened my eyes wide, looked out at the new world that surrounded me, the world that I had known forever, the world that accepted me now as I accepted it, my homecoming. And I knew, then, this more than anything else: a tide running the length and breadth of the city reached out, took hold of me and would not let go until one thing had been accomplished, one thing that had to be done. Yes. I had to go back to Manhattan. If only to prove once and for all that I had survived.  
  
I had scrupulously planned it out on the train ride over, and this feeling went against everything that I had figured. There were two paths set out for me, and I was old enough to know now that they very rarely converged. Manhattan was the battleground, where every street was charged with painful memory. Manhattan was where all of us had risen above the hand fate dealt us, and it was where I had fallen. It had been my goal to avoid it for as long as I could, to go about the quiet business of making a life for myself here where I belonged, looking after Spot and staying where I was safe. Going to Manhattan now would ruin everything, destroy my plans and bring me back to the place I had been six years back, when the dress rehearsal that my life had been finally seemed to make sense. There were two paths laid out for me: ration and instinct. I took the latter. What else could I do?  
  
*~*~*  
  
Past  
  
*~*~*  
  
"So what are we gonna call you now?"  
  
Samuel looked over at his little sister, and saw the expression of insatiable curiosity on her face that never really seemed to go away. "I dunno," he admitted. "I haven't thought of anythin' yet."  
  
Sammy considered this. She wasn't entirely sure if she liked the idea of her brother going by a different name. She had seen enough change in the past week to last her a lifetime. Samuel changing his name would only add to that. And change, she had decided, was never a good thing.  
  
Samuel went back to sifting through the gutters, poking through the accumulated debris with the worn-down sides of his boots, looking for something good to take to the junkie on Sunday. It was how a lot of the kids on Water Street made a little extra money-collecting string, paper, washers and cardboard and balls of tinfoil. What bought peppermint wafers and purey marbles for the other children helped put food on the table in the Conlon house. And that did for Samuel what no baseball mitt or bag of gemlike boiled sweets could-he was providing family, and it gave him a sense of pride that he had never known the likes of before. It was a feeling that he needed a name to go with. Something strong. Something grown-up. Most of all, something new.  
  
"I was thinkin' maybe, y'know, somethin' tough-soundin'," Samuel said shamelessly, kicking at the curb with the toe of his show. "Like, I dunno...Fang, or Dragon...."  
  
"Fang?" Sammy said incredulously, already beginning to giggle.  
  
"Aw, shut yer pie-hole," Samuel muttered, his cheeks beginning to color. As if to add insult to injury, a man hurrying along the sidewalk, clearly not looking where he was going, bumped into the equally unseeing Samuel, taken by surprise so that he was unable even to break his fall.  
  
"Sorry about dat," the man chuckled, helping Samuel up. "Didn't even see ya, boy. Why, you're no bigger 'n a spot of ink."  
  
Irritated, Samuel turned his eyes to the ground once more, as Samantha just stood there, grinning at him dumbly. He waited for her to say something else, but she remained silent, irritating him to no end simply by not speaking. "Cat got yer tongue?" he said at last.  
  
"That's what we'll call you," she said.  
  
"Call me what?" he asked, exasperated.  
  
"Spot!" she laughed. "We'll call you Spot."  
  
"What, like a dog?"  
  
She didn't answer, dancing around him in a circle, chanting in her high voice: "Spot, Spot, Spot Conlon, Spot, no bigger 'n a spot of ink," always evading him by a hair's breadth whenever he reached out to grab hold of her. From that day on, she called him nothing else: first because it simply annoyed him, and then because neither she nor anybody else simply could not conceive of him being called by another name.  
  
*~*~*  
  
In the wild constellation of Manhattan, lit by the violent, celestial lights of a thousand places that I had known and could not remember forgetting, Central Park was my constant, my point of reference, my north star as I navigated this unforgiving world. My father had taken Spot and I there when we were young, and he still the strongest man in the world. Later, while I was in Manhattan visiting with Jack after he had long graduated from the gritty majesty of the Brooklyn docks, we had gone there together to admire one of the few things of beauty that either of us knew. I knew the minute I made it across the bridge that Central Park was where I was headed; right then, it was one of the few places that I could go, a neutral territory in a city overcome by old battlegrounds.  
  
It was cold that day, just a few degrees above freezing. I walked with my head down, bracing myself against the elements. Sitting down in one place, staying still, would only make me colder, even if I could convince myself I was warm. But by principle almost everything I had done in the past few years had been wrong, in some way or another. Doing the sensible thing would somehow have been going against the grain of my nature. I found a familiar place, a bench in an unpeopled pocket of the park that, and gratefully sat down, feeling my cheeks burn with cold.  
  
Trying not to think about Spot was almost as difficult as thinking about him-it required a great amount of skill in the subject of avoidance, something that I had never really possessed. Maybe it was because of how hard I was trying not to think about Spot, and then worry, and then panic, and then lose whatever remaining shred of sanity that I had left, that I didn't notice the little girl until she ran smack into me and fell sprawling on the ground. She jolted me out of an intense reverie--on gingersnaps or matches or baseball or some other topic that was as far removed from Spot as I could possibly get-and I helped her right herself, a girl no older than five who had lost her footing chasing after a ball that got out of control. I'll always remember the first impression I got of her, a girl I immediately saw myself in, a tomboyish disappointment to mothers everywhere with eyes of a warm, chocolate brown that I had only seen once before, long brown braids and an enormous red tam-o'-shanter that slightly resembled a tea-cozy, perched askew on her head.  
  
"Sorry, Miss" she mumbled as I helped her up off the ground ("Miss"? When exactly did this happen?), looking at me sheepishly while she brushed the dirt from her jumper.  
  
"It's all right," I said, reaching down under the bench as I rummaged around for her ball. As I handed it to her, she rewarded me with a stupendous crooked-toothed grin. "What's your name?" I asked her.  
  
She tossed the ball from one palm to the other as she answered, dropping the thing more often than she managed to catch it. "Annie-well, my whole name's Annabelle Samantha. But nobody ever calls me that." She wrinkled her nose.  
  
"It's a fancy name," I supplied.  
  
"I don' like it. Papa says it was Mama's idea t' call me it, but he jist calls me Annie."  
  
"That's a nice name too."  
  
Suddenly she dropped the ball in midair, her jovial manner evaporating. "I ain't allowed t' talk to you. I just remembered-you're a stranger."  
  
"Oh," I said quickly, "I'm not a stranger at all."  
  
She looked at me with newfound interest. "You're not?"  
  
"Nope," I said, picking up the ball and tossing it to her once again, in what was beginning to feel like a familiar ritual. " 'Cause I'm a Samantha too."  
  
"You ARE?"  
  
"Yep." She tossed the ball back to me, without even thinking, and I did the same, the game continuing on like that until we didn't even notice we were doing it. "We've gotta stick together, you 'n me. There aren't many of us left."  
  
She nodded. "That was Papa's idea. The Samantha part. It's kinda a fancy name too, ain't it?"  
  
"Yep. Just like Annabelle. But I usually go by Sam."  
  
Annie started chattering excitedly then, about how I could come live at their house and we could be friends together, an high-pitched narrative that she couldn't seem to get out fast enough, one sentence overtaking another before she was even finished speaking it. While she talked I studied her, her face and the way she tossed an errant lock of hair out of her eyes. There was something so sweetly familiar about her, something that I just couldn't place, and I knew that it was going to trouble me until I figured it out.  
  
And things continued on like that until suddenly a low, blunt shout cut into her words. "Annie! C'mon, it's getting dark," came the call, lost somewhere, just out of sight.  
  
Her ears perked up at the sound of that. "That's Papa. Wanna meet him?" she asked me. It wasn't really a question, of course. She took my hand in her small, mittened one and led me hurriedly towards the source of the noise.  
  
It really was getting dark, the trees casting long shadows that were quickly turning into a harder stuff, the makings of night. I only noticed we had reached her father until she looked up at him proudly, and said to me, as if whispering some fantastic secret: "that's Papa."  
  
But of course, by then I didn't need any sort of an introduction. It was dark, and the face I saw older, a face I hadn't seen for nearly six years. But still it would have been impossible for me not to recognize it. And suddenly it was the only face that I could ever see, the only person that I wanted to see at all. It was the only person that could have been there. It was Jack.  
  
*~*~*  
  
TBC... 


	5. Franny & Pinky

A/N: You may or may not have noticed that Dalton, my annoying yet semi-cute preppie muse, has been oddly silent so far in this fic. I've managed to keep him from talking by feeding him a jar or so of peanut butter every time I start a new chapter, and so far it's worked like a charm, but we ran out of Skippy yesterday morning and now there's no stopping him. . .  
  
DALTON: Damn straight.  
  
*sigh* Anyway, Dalton promises that if I let him talk at the beginning of this chapter he'll never ask to again during the "Home" series. And. . .well. . .I guess there's no forgiving me. But if you could find it in your hearts to send me a gallon or so of peanut butter, or even nutella. . .  
  
DALTON: Okay, Dakki, time's up. Now then. I think it's time for. . .  
  
"Dalton And Friends Reviewer Rodeo"!  
  
"Okay. A word to all readers, past reviewers, and people who are even mildly tempted to review this chapter:  
  
STOP. REVIEWING. NOW.  
  
Okay. Maybe it's just ignorance. I mean, maybe you just don't know what Dakki *does* when she gets a review. Well, I'll tell you-she gets so happy she starts bouncing up and down, and then she has to run around the house singing old Cyndi Lauper songs, wearing my underwear on her head. And even worse, the more you review, the more she's encouraged and the sooner she'll update. And you just don't want that. So...please...just don't review, okay?"  
  
*sigh* Are you done yet?  
  
DALTON: *satisfied* Yes.  
  
So. To wrap it up: don't listen to anything Dalton says, ever. Review often. Eat peanut butter, it'll make you grow up big and strong. And most of all, thank you. I love you all.  
  
*~*~*  
  
Home  
  
*~*~*  
  
Always in life there are things that we cannot help but take joy from- simple things, trinkets of our daily existence, and moments among thousands crystallized and remembered forever. We sort them and string them like pearls on a necklace and wear them next to our hearts like rosary beads. Everyone has their own strand, moments of truth, beauty, exquisite sadness and understanding, or just pure and unburdened bliss-glimmering and opalescent, and all their own. You have yours, your collection of the things that for just one moment align the stars and make the world a perfect place. You have yours, and I have mine as well.  
  
Collected on my own fishing-line, the gems and spangles decorating my life-  
  
The rickety Ferris wheel out on Coney Island, and the first time you ever rode it, faster than even the wind. Spot's first golden summer, when Brooklyn was his and everything was right. The water of the Hudson, soaking you through after a summer swan-dive, purer and colder than any storybook fountain of youth. The way that Jack grinned, his dopey smile, slivers of which I found in Greece, China and Sicily, the smile I searched the world to find. Black licorice's biting sweetness; the first snow of winter; summer rain. And now I had one more thing to add to this list, something that I would be able to look back on and always laugh about: the look on Jack's face when he looked at me that night in the park, and realized for the first time who I was.  
  
First, unabashed shock. Then his look metamorphosed into joy, the look you take on when you see an old friend, one you think you have lost. Then a questioning glint in his eyes, and then at last his mind took over, molding his features in the form of punch-drunk reserve.  
  
"Samantha," he said, "you're here."  
  
"She goes by Sam," Annie whispered to him, not missing a beat.  
  
"Of course," Jack said, looking at me, his expression dazed. He reached out a hand through the silky shadows, cupping my cheek in his roughened palm, almost as if he was trying to assure himself that I was really there. "It is you...isn't it?"  
  
I nodded. Slowly...like him everything about me was slow, slow to move and speak, slow to think. My body didn't trust itself in this familiar reality, and somewhere in my mind I was still a million miles away. I wondered when the dark and untold rhythms of the vagabond had replaced in my heart the constancy of New York. And I realized for the first time that Jack and everyone else could very well have changed just as much as I had in these past six years.  
  
"It's me," I said. "It's me, Cowboy...or, no-does anyone even call you that anymore?"  
  
"Not really," he said, with an air almost of regret in his voice, as of a concert violinist laying down his instrument for the very last time. Annabelle was eyeing him with interest, clearly uninformed until now of her father's past. "None a' the old nicknames are really still around."  
  
"Not even Franny?"  
  
Annie tried desperately to keep herself from laughing. She looked as if she was about to rupture a kidney with the effort it took. Jack grinned and leaned forward, whispering loudly in my ear: "If ya don't tell her about the hat an' bandanna, I might let ya live." And I knew right then that it really was him.  
  
He hoisted Annie up and put her on his shoulders, craning his neck and smiling at her, two pairs of chocolate-brown eyes meeting through the half- darkness. "Whaddaya think you're smilin' about, goilie?" he asked her playfully.  
  
"Nothing," she said, biting her lip. She had the innocence bit down.  
  
Jack turned and smiled at me, and took me by the hand. "Looks like we got a little catchin' up ta do, huh Conlon?"  
  
"Just a little," I said. Above me, the cold swaths of cloud parted, revealing a perfect crescent moon. The light it shone on the park, the trees, on our hands linked together, was as bright as the low-burning flame of memory.  
  
*~*~*  
  
Past  
  
*~*~*  
  
Lithe and sure-footed, a child of the streets, Spot sifted through the garbage that spilled into the alleyway, searching for something to eat. Hunger was a reverberation inside of him, a rhythm barely felt, only making its presence known in the knotted feeling of emptiness that lived at the pit of his stomach. He had not eaten for four days.  
  
Four days. It was a lifetime to him, a time long and wide enough to erase the past and make him wonder if any other life had existed before this one. He was already beginning to forget what his mother's face looked like. He could remember all the rest of it, the clouded and dangerous months that had come before, with a knife's deadly precision, and he knew that somehow it was his fault. He had tried his hardest to support them, finding things to take to the junkie in exchange for a few pennies, shining shoes, doing odd jobs, selling anything he could find, even buttons or bits of string. And Mumma had worked all day at the factory. They had been surviving, nothing dangerous in their path, getting along, barely, but getting along- and then one morning Mumma couldn't get up, coughed up blood, couldn't breathe, or even speak. Dr. Hennessey came and looked inside her, tapped her chest and listened to her breathing. Shook his head and said words that Spot didn't understand. Tissue-thin words, the battle going on inside his mother. One word that stood out most of all: pneumonia. He kept it with him and whispered it to himself that night. Pneumonia. Fear and the uncertainty of their futures had a name, and in its cadence and syllabification, the sound of it was almost beautiful.  
  
And Kathleen took her son and daughter in her arms, gave them what she could. Her words were breathless coming out of her, falling each like stones, and she told them what she thought they needed to know. Kissed Spot on his brow, and he knew then that she was already gone. Last words hanging in the still night air: my poor children.  
  
Their mother had been their home, and with no home they took to the streets, sleeping in the alleys, trying their best to survive. Spot was nine years old, and Sammy just turned six. In the past four days he had unearthed a hardened heel of bread and a green apple soft with rot that he had told Samantha to eat core and all to fill her stomach. The bread, too, had gone to her, and whatever he could find this morning--if he was lucky enough to find anything at all.  
  
My poor children.  
  
Spot sifted through the garbage rich with coffee grounds and eggshells ivory white, lemon rind and spoiled greens, the wrinkled paper of yesterday's news. Suddenly, he unearthed a jackpot-a whole boiled potato, white and perfect. Someone's uneaten leftovers. He cradled it in his palms as carefully as one would a robin's egg, breathing of its rich and earthy scent.  
  
"Hey, kid. What's yer name?"  
  
Spot jumped, stood straight up, stock still, and looked the man dead in the eye, refusing to back down. He swallowed hard. The person who had spoken was huge, tall and strong-looking, hands thick and callused, made for work. But when Spot looked closer he could see that he was only a teenager, no older than sixteen with his dark thatch of hair covered by a ragged gray cap and a thick stack of papers pinned under his arm.  
  
"What's it to ya?" Spot said sharply, not willing to give an inch.  
  
The boy sighed, reached up for his cap and swiped it across his brow. "You been livin' out here a while?"  
  
Spot nodded.  
  
"Hungry?"  
  
"Yeh."  
  
"Why dontcha come with me kid, huh? Give ya somethin' to eat, maybe you'd like to stay with us at th' lodgin' house?"  
  
"Lodgin' house?" Spot asked faintly. In his mind he was already sitting down to lunch-his imagination running far ahead of him, envisioning a plate loaded with thick slabs of corned beef, salted, tender and juicy, with boiled cabbage and carrots and roast potatoes crackling with fat. His mouth began to water, and as he looked up again at the boy the reality of his surroundings hit him hard, hunger coming to him like a blow to the stomach.  
  
"Newsies lodgin' house," the boy explained. "It ain't much, but we'll take care a' you. C'mon. You think I can leave ya out on th' street like dis? You'll be dead in a week. How old are ya, kid? Seven?"  
  
"Nine," Spot said defensively.  
  
The boy cracked a smile. "C'mon, kid, whaddaya say?" Seeing Spot's look, he spat into his palm and extended a hand to him, which Spot tentatively shook. "Wolf MacLeod."  
  
"Spot Conlon," he said, proudly, in the way that he had been taught to speak his name.  
  
Wolf grinned. "A mick, huh? That's good. We'll be friends, you 'n me-we Irish gotta stick together. 'S mostly eye-ties over at th' lodgin' house. Pinky Falconetti, he's an eye-tie. Still, wit' you, I guess we got him outnumbered two to one, huh?"  
  
"Who's Pinky?" Spot asked curiously.  
  
"Never mind, kid. You'll find out soon enough. Well," he said, gesturing towards the sidewalk. "Guess we'd better get goin'." He had already begun to walk, expecting the boy to follow, when Spot called out.  
  
"Wait! Not yet. We can't go widout Sam."  
  
Wolf sighed. "G'wan then, kid. I'll wait here."  
  
Wolf didn't quite know what to imagine "Sam" was. Maybe a dog, or a younger brother. But whatever he thought it could have been, it wasn't a skinny girl with matted blonde hair, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as Spot lead her from the alley.  
  
"Dis is your sister?" Wolf hazarded. He could already tell that it would be impossible to separate the two, and didn't want to think about how he would get Pinky to let the girl stay at the lodging house.  
  
Spot nodded. "Well, c'mon, kid," Wolf sighed, leading the way once again. "Let's get you two fed."  
  
*~*~*  
  
There is nothing sweeter, nothing more beautiful, than your first meal after days without food. Like air to a drowning man or water to someone parched and dying of thirst-for a few moments that spread themselves willfully into an eternity, Spot could concentrate only on the meal placed in front of him, and on the miracle of need finally answered. He devoured an entire roast chicken in what seemed to be a matter of seconds, and afterwards slowly picked over the oily carcass rich with salty remainders as he talked to Wolf for the rest of the morning, unwilling to let the smallest morsel go uneaten. Sam, too exhausted to do much of anything after she had eaten her fill, had curled up under the table with her head in Wolf's lap, lulled to sleep by the comfort of a full stomach and the lull of the voices around her.  
  
Wolf MacLeod was a person cursed with a soft heart and a weakness for children and animals, and for the rest of his life he would try desperately, acting against his strong humanitarian streak, to seem tougher than he actually was. The name "Wolf," frightening as it might have made him seem, was nothing more than half indication of his size and his strength and half a joke at his expense. The only way his appearance served him was to discourage anyone from trying to pick a fight, for if anyone had, he would never have had the heart to throw even a few punches.  
  
As it turned out, Spot had hit an unexpected windfall all those years ago when Sam had given his new nickname. At the Brooklyn lodging house, at the time that he came and for many years afterward as well, it was a general unspoken rule that the more threatening the name, the less threatening the newsie, and vice versa. Named Wolf, you were guaranteed to be everyone's friend. The ones to look out for were called things that would seem absurd to anyone outside looking in, right up to Pinky Falconetti, at the time the most feared newsie in New York City.  
  
But Spot didn't know any of this yet. The world was contained in the fragile skeleton of a picked-over roast chicken, and Wolf was his hero, the strongest man in the world. In a world where the gap between children and adults (that is, those brave souls strong enough to make it past the age of twelve) seemed all but insurmountable, Wolf was easy to talk to, seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say, and also had the definite advantage, from the outset, of being the one who had taken him off the streets and given him the most precious thing that Spot could imagine there was: lunch.  
  
Wolf, too, had already taken a shining to Spot. He was a fighter, tough and street-smart, and even at nine years old it was obvious that he was a born leader. The kid would go on to do great things, bigger than Brooklyn. And for now, he would no doubt be something for Pinky to reckon with.  
  
*~*~*  
  
The chicken was still on Spot's mind as Wolf led him into the lodging house. It was late afternoon, the shadows just beginning to lengthen a little and the sky a gentle blue that would linger on undiminished for hours yet. Spot had spent the early afternoon out selling with Wolf, led through the back-alleys and busy thoroughfares, accompanied by the music of the streets, the carriage wheels and hawker's shouts. Wolf had made a killing that day with Spot as his selling partner, with Samantha doing her bit as well. Sensationalistic headlines aside, the best tool a newsie could ever hope for was a wide-eyed child who could get sympathy from almost every customer and, if that didn't work, could run fast enough to make off with a quarter with a call over their shoulder that they didn't have any change, losing themselves in the crowd before their unwitting victim could object. Ever the advocate of fairness, Wolf had slipped sixty cents to Spot to cover both him and his sister, and as the sun began to inch towards the horizon there was nothing left to do but the messy business of introducing the two children to the rest of the lodging house.  
  
Picture it, now, as it would have been then, seen through the eyes of a child of nine:  
  
Darkness, first. It's a shock after the summer afternoon softly shining like the surface of a new-minted coin, and for a moment you can't see a thing. You're close to the docks, the scream of the gulls and the stink of fish fresh in your mind, and now in this filthy bunker, light filtering weakly through the dirty windowpanes, you are struck with the thought that you may be underwater. In truth, it never really gets light in here-the lodging house is stranded in the shadows of greater buildings that have not yet had the time to begin falling apart, and even at midday it is hard to read so much as a headline without the help of a kerosene lamp. But slowly, your eyes begin to adjust, and you take it all in-beds, cluttered and clustered, rickety, most of them empty, but a few boys sprawled on their flea-infested mattresses, shirtless in the day's unexpected heat, their bodies lean and vulpine, their eyes cold. The room littered with the possessions of boys-clothes stained and ragged, old grease-stained newspapers, suspenders, boots worn through at the heels. A few younger boys too, eyes shining, hiding in the shadows of the older ones. And at the back of the room, slouched low, smoking a cigar with a bitter expression as he looks out the window, is the boy who is clearly in charge.  
  
Pinky Falconetti's exact age was a topic of much discussion among the Brooklyn newsies. He was slight of frame and small in height, like a young boy who had yet to reach his growth spurt-for his entire life he would never grow taller than five foot three inches. His whole life, too, he had been skin and bones, like a junkyard dog deprived of food for far too long, and to look at him you never would have thought that he could come close to beating you in a fair fight. Judging from this information alone, one would have guessed that he was no older than twelve or thirteen. But his face told a different story: quick, dark eyes older than the rest of him, a jagged knife scar scored across one cheek. He had the quick fingers of a pickpocket, almost fast enough to match his wits. The day that Wolf brought Spot and Sam into the lodging house, Pinky was seventeen, and had had the Brooklyn newsies under his thumb for almost two years. The moment that Spot laid eyes on him-dark hair and raw cheeks, gold-tipped cane carried at his side, his look of eternal indifference-his brief allegiance to Wolf shifted immediately to this new hero. He saw for the first time that you didn't have to be a giant to have power-power was this boy's, and it could be his too. From that moment on, he worshipped Pinky heart and soul. And in Brooklyn, there were worse idols to have.  
  
Pinky did have power, almost as much as Spot imagined him to. It was the only language he spoke, and the only thing that responded to his touch. Gentleness was a word that he had never known; he had spent his life running away before he could be abandoned, and his force over others was the only thing that he could count on. The girls he was with stayed for one night only; that was the rule. Some sweet nighttime rough-and-tumble- it was what he imagined to live for. But still in the dark and windless nights he could not help but wait for the few moments after, when all was still, and the girl, whoever it was, would press her length against him, and run soft hands across the scars of his body. Dusky tenderness burned away quick by the merciless Brooklyn sun-and then another day, of forgetting and surviving, and he was back to being the one that everyone feared. And if Wolf, glad and big, eternally smiling, was the ultimate in kindness in those years, then Pinky was his mirror image-ungenerous and eternally wounded, refusing to trust, hating animals, children, family. He looked up that afternoon at Spot standing in awe in the doorway, and saw- what?-a runt. Worthless to him and everyone else.  
  
"Whadja bring back dis time, Wolf?" he asked hoarsely.  
  
Clearing his throat, Wolf nudged Spot out from where he stood near-hidden as he leaned against the unsteady threshold, and sent him reluctantly out into the open, where Pinky could see him in full. The Brooklyn leader sidled up to the front of the room, emerging out of the shadows, and looked at him critically. Spot felt him taking in his ragged clothes, bony chest and pale, pointed face. But even as he sensed those eyes appraising him, he refused to back down. He knew that he would get nowhere fast if he didn't stand his ground, and so he looked Pinky straight in the eye with an unflinching gaze, refusing to look away.  
  
For a moment, Pinky faltered. Looked at the skinny half-grown guttersnipe trying to stare him down, eyes the color of gunmetal and just as cold. And he must have seen, looking into those eyes, the growing spark of power and determination that was making itself apparent even when the boy was only nine years old. He must have understood that if anyone this was the person who would succeed him to the throne; he must have looked down at him, then, and been unable to deny the strength that he saw. But if he did, then he did a good job of hiding it.  
  
"Well, kid, can ya tawk?" he asked at last. Spot-whether through impudence or fear, he would never be able to quite decide-simply nodded.  
  
From where he stood, taking this all in, Wolf couldn't help but be amazed. He looked over at Sam where she stood leaning against the doorjamb, chewing thoughtfully on a twist of black licorice that he had bought for her. "Your brother's a real tough cookie, huh Sam?"  
  
Sam looked over at Pinky. "I ain't afraid of him, neither," she said briskly.  
  
"You gonna be like Spot, then?"  
  
"Wolf!" she exclaimed, looking up at him in horror with her clear blue eyes. "Of course not! I'm a GIRL!"  
  
Wolf looked down at her, smiling faintly, and took in the little girl standing before him. The light shining behind her, coming in through the door of the bunkroom, illuminated her tangled yellow mop, creating the illusion of a halo. A childhood on Water Street had not yet managed to rob her of what he knew she would lose so soon-that certain softness, a gentler shape. She was right-she was a girl. But in a few years, growing up to be like her brother wouldn't be that far off.  
  
Wolf turned his attention back to Pinky. A slow smirk was curving across his lips, the one everybody in the lodging house was so accustomed to by now, the one that meant trouble. But Spot took him in head on, seemingly unfazed. Looking at him carefully with the quick eye of a sibling, Sam saw what the others missed: his hand nervously clutching at a handful of fabric from his shirt, shaking in panic. But still, his eyes remained locked with the older boy's, daring him to look away.  
  
"Ya gotta name, kid?"  
  
"Yeh."  
  
"Well, what is it, den? Cat got yer tongue?"  
  
As nonchalantly as he could, Spot spat into his palm as he had seen Wolf do, and extended it to Pinky, waiting for him to do the same. "Spot Conlon, of da Water Street Conlons. 'Sa pleasure ta make yer acquaintance."  
  
Pinky didn't so much double up with mirth as explode with it-laughter bubbling up organ-deep, hearty, face-contorting laughter. "That's yer name, kid?" he said at last, once he had gotten control of himself. "Hey, Wolf," he called, sniggering, "ya sure ya brought home a kid this time? Could be a lost dog."  
  
"Aw, Pinky, leave th' kid alone."  
  
"Seriously, kid," Pinky repeated, undaunted, "what kind of a name is Spot?"  
  
Spot's face was red with anger. "Well, what kind of a name is Pinky, huh?"  
  
Suddenly, all the laughter evaporated from the Brooklyn leader. Unlike Spot, he had had ample time to come up with a good retort to that question, and used it whenever possible. "It means," he said, his voice suddenly low as he crouched down, bringing his roughened knuckles close to Spot's face and letting his fist connect gently with his chin, "dat if ya piss me off, Spot, I'se gonna pink ya 'fore youse can even run off. I'm gonna give you a second chance now, though, 'cause I ain't in the mood ta waste my time on you. So scram." Spot stood his ground. "What, are ya deaf too? Get outta my sight, kid. Beat it!"  
  
Chastened, Spot slowly backed away, back to Wolf's comforting shadow. Pinky sighed and looked over at the boy who, despite a lifetime of conflict, remained one of his only true friends. "Lemme guess..."  
  
"C'mon, Pinky, ya can't turn 'em out on the streets. They got no place ta go."  
  
"Them?" Pinky said caustically. "Ya got more than one?"  
  
Tentatively, Sammy stepped forward, half-trying to hide behind her brother. "I'm Samantha," she said, voice barely above a whisper.  
  
"Huly Jesus..." Pinky muttered.  
  
"So ya gonna let him stay?" Wolf asked.  
  
"Sure," Pinky said at last. "Sure. But jus' one night. Then they can fend for themselves."  
  
Laughing, Wolf slung an arm around Pinky's shoulders, walking towards the dimness at the end of the bunkroom as Spot and Samantha made introductions with the younger newsies. "Knew you'd come through for me, Pinky."  
  
"Yeah, yeah..." Pinky looked down, scuffing the floor with the tip of his cane. "Hey, Wolf?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Ya mind not tellin' th' kid how I really got my nickname?"  
  
"Sure, Pinky. Why?"  
  
"No reason...he just, uh...kinda reminds me of someone. Someone I used ta know."  
  
*~*~*  
  
TBC... 


End file.
